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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Finished or not?

Hmm. I can't make up my mind on whether or not to stop here on this quilt top or add more to it. One part of me likes the simplicity of it and the other says that there is a lot of space left. Stopping here is winning out I think since the doctor wants me to cut back on useage of eyes. NOT an easy thing to do.

I also finished my June doll quilt swap project. Some of you might remember this from before. It is the left overs from my tube quilting experiment. It measures around 16" which is in the middle range for the swap. My swap partner is in Australia and didn't have any specific color or design that she wanted. She just said surprise me.

Here is the picture from the back.

I decided to use a decorative stitch that was on my sewing machine. I like this stitch and have used it before. I stitched in the middle of each strip.

The stitch also seemed to fit in with the swirly pattern on the back.

I have also started to work again on my Sashiko project. This was given to me in a swap last year and it has taken me a bit to get one simple question answered. Do you "quilt" it when you do the stitching or only at the end. Here is my progress so far (and the answer was do not quilt when you stitch).

I am using DMC No. 8 perlized thread. It came with another type of thread---more like cording--- but I have misplaced this and read that this is good to use. I am liking working with it so far. You cut your thread long enough to go across one row of stitches at a time. You work in one direction until completed and then work in the other direction. It is basically a running stitch but the needle is 2" long. I am not a fan of this material since is feels like a poly and I prefer cotton. The patterns could be transferred easy enough to work on cottons also. One of the responses I received indicated that when she had taken a class, they used something similar to a heavy stabilizer on their fabric before stitching but did not actually quilt it, in the typical sense of the word, when doing the stitching. They did quilt it when it was finished.